Does anyone have any photos comparing the different versions ….....

@Nowhere:

Never a fan of the default German transports

Me neither.  For background info on that particular class, see here:

http://www.german-navy.de/kriegsmarine/ships/auxships/dithmarschen/history.html

@toblerone77 A bit late to the party here but anyway…!
The sculpts are made in a lighter plastic than later versions and the Japanese infantry sculpts, for example, really show this. Lots of them have half their helmets missing and their rifle stocks are too thin and are thus often bowed or malformed. Another example is Italian tanks which have smaller and far inferior sculpts to the europe 1940 version.
This is my favourite Axis and Allies version regardless and I have swapped out all the pieces with better sculpts from other version. Its probably cost me a fortune in potential re sales but I don’t care.

@docfav7:

Global is going to be the way to go.  No doubt.  However, if time is a concern, Spring 1942 is still a great option.  We play this on Monday nights.  A couple of things though.  GET RID OF THE BOARD!  Download IL’s map and get it printed somewhere.  This is a must.  #2 get an extra set of money.  Poker chips, old style money, whatever.  Those 2 things alone make 1942 version worth playing.

Try it first. So many people dis the '42 board, when it is perfectly playable. Definitely try playing on it and see if you like it before spending a bunch of money to get a new one printed.

Gents

Thanks for all the input.  Much appreciated.

Stable version: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?wn3mjmen3yk

Unstable version: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?wzvnmlw1uej

Well, you guys might be missing something here.  You do not need to agree that the game is imbalanced, or have a consensus on what bid is necessary to balance it, to have a consensus on what I am talking about.
Example: Person A may think the game is already balanced and that a bid is not necessary, Person B thinks an Allied bid of 6 ipcs is needed when you play with NOs, and Person C is nutty and thinks that 21 ipcs are needed for the allies with NOs.  But all of these three people may in fact agree that a bid of 2 infantry in europe would be equivalent to a bid of 2 naval warships off the coast of america.
Agreeing on what to do to balance the game is not a pre-requisite to agreeing on certain bids types being equivalent.

Or, to think about it in a different way, lets think of this as a Ratio.
I’m just going to throw this out there, but lets say you have a Bid of X.
If you use it on the “front line” in either Europe or Africa/MiddleEast, then all you get is X.
If you use it not on the front line in Europe/Africa/MiddleEast, or you use it on the front line in China, then you get X1.5
If you use it not on the front line in China, or you use it in the Atlantic on Navy, UK main island Air/Land, then you get X2
If you use it on Pacific navy, or American Continent Land/Air, then you get X*2.5.

Now, as you can see, if you think X should be zero, then they all end up as zero.  If you think X should be 6, then you could either get 2 europe/egypt inf, or 3 chinese inf, or a cruiser in the atlantic, or a DD + a sub in the pacific.  If you think X should be 10, etc, etc.

Put a control marker under the cruisers.  that way if you do screw em up, you still know what you meant to have had and what you paid for.

We used to do this a lot in classic when we had “special” units like Panzers (Att 4, Def 2) or Marines (Att 3 (amphibious only), Att 0 (ground assault), Def 0), etc.

@captainjack:

Could you take a picture of the IPC’s - I’ve heard they look cool.

I’ve uploaded one to BoardGameGeek.